Example sentences of "[noun sg] had be [adj] [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | He had been employed before 1917 in the archives of the foreign ministry and one of his ancestors on his mother 's side had been Russian ambassador in Vienna during the 1814 – 15 congress . |
| 2 | Her last post had been General Secretary to the Association of Headmistresses . |
| 3 | While the ebb and flow to this point had been absorbing stuff , the ensuing capitulation was nothing short of astonishing , far more dramatic and conclusive than that suffered by England two years ago ; but still never totally unexpected on a pitch showing wear and uneven bounce in equal measure . |
| 4 | Defying the need to slump her head dejectedly on to her arms , to howl long and hard that every minute of this evening had been utter hell and that all she wanted now was to curl up safe and warm in her own bed . |
| 5 | Literature — above all fiction — has never been a notably gentlemanly profession in Britain , as Dickens and H. G. Wells illustrate ; and the Bloomsbury group had been upper middle-class rather than aristocratic . |
| 6 | Pablo Merry del Val , whose father had been Spanish Ambassador in London , conducted briefings for the correspondents and censored their dispatches . |
| 7 | I had seen him on a number of occasions during my childhood in Abyssinia where my father had been British Minister at Addis Ababa , but this was the first time I spoke to him . |
| 8 | His father had been busy writing about shore larks . |
| 9 | For several decades Britain 's policy had been splendid isolation , and that Europe 's most powerful nation should emerge from that isolation by concluding an alliance with Japan was seen in Japan as a triumph . |
| 10 | In large areas of Britain the results of the Thatcher government had been mass unemployment , collapsing public services , and urban decay . |
| 11 | Forty perished and three years later the Scottish Parliament voted that the killing had been unlawful murder . |
| 12 | Azerbaijan accused Armenian forces of shooting down the helicopter , while Armenia claimed that the cause had been poor weather . |
| 13 | The typical known user had been smoking heroin daily for about one to three years , having started the habit around the age of 16–18 , and was using 0.25–0.5 gram of heroin per day ( costing between 20 and 35 ) at the time of agency contact . |
| 14 | The average holiday cost £370 a week and nine out of 10 thought their holiday had been good value . |
| 15 | After so long thinking that the reason for our kidnap had been bad feeling between Britain and Iran , and knowing that , before the Rushdie affair at least , fences had been mended , it was hard to believe now that it had all been a mirage . |
| 16 | The defining elements of Pilkingtons ' management culture had been technical excellence and centralism . |
| 17 | But Webb 's strict ethical judgement that , once the couple had been pronounced man and wife , Benjamin was not entitled to put them asunder , disregards the fact that Benjamin has rescued Elaine from a loveless marriage before it is consummated . |
| 18 | When a younger and less sophisticated Hank had come quietly through the back gate in search of the garage , the couple had been busy planting a lilac tree . |